10 Non Fiction Books To Improve Your Reality and Make You Smarter

The non fiction books here are a mix of different genres, but what they all have in common is that they are thought provoking, reality changing, motivating, and inspiring. These non fiction books are in this list because they are filled with knowledge that everyone should know.

It is often the personal stories that tell the bigger truths. As with Barbara Ehrenreich‘s intensely personal Nickel and Dimed, Perkins’ story illuminates a larger picture in a way that more scholarly treatises cannot match. I value the perspective I get from Noam Chomsky and Chalmers Johnson and many others who have written about our modern empire. None of these works, though, explains it from the ground up. Perkins does that.

This book is just fantastic. It’s worth reading for the history of the monetary system alone. Money itself is the sublime exemplar of this fact. This odd measure of value. It is so ubiquitous in our culture, so fundamental to how we all live, yet we rarely sit and contemplate what it really “is.” Where it comes from, what it does, and who (in the final analysis) really controls it. Most of us spend most of our waking hours chasing it, without really understanding what it really is we are doing.

The antireligion wars started by Daniel Dennett and Sam Harris will heat up even more with this salvo from celebrated Oxford biologist Dawkins. For a scientist who criticizes religion for its intolerance, Dawkins has written a surprisingly intolerant book, full of scorn for religion and those who believe.

From the front lines of today’s sexual battlefield comes an eye-opening examination of the hookup culture, seen through the personal experiences of the teenage girls and young women who live it-and who are left unprepared for its consequences. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author presents a disturbing and enlightening indictment of the hookup culture, the social forces that contribute to it, and what can be done to change it.

This is one of the most fascinating books I have read in some time. The book centers on the concept of how fast we really do make judgments, called “thin slicing”, and how deeper analysis can sometimes provide less information than more. It is all about cognitive speed.

This book is a well-written and humorous account of how the author, Tim Ferris, completely disregarded how we have been told to live. Tim breaks the “conventional” mold of leaving his crappy 9-5 job, playing to his strengths, and being resourceful enough to make an amazing life for himself…on his own terms.

In one compelling volume, the famous biologist Jared Diamond tackles the most important question of global history: Why did Europeans come to dominate the New World? A major advance in our understanding of human societies, Guns, Germs, and Steel chronicles the way that the modern world came to be and stunningly dismantles racially based theories of human history.

Manufacturing Consent, Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky’s 1988 analysis of press censorship in America, is an insightful look at the ways public opinion and choices can be molded by dominating interests in a free society. Its value lies in the model Herman and Chomsky develop and test to account for this censorship; while they limit their investigation to a few specific cases — three 1980s Central American elections, the alleged 1981 KGB-Bulgarian plot to kill the Pope, and the Indochina Wars — their model is testable and can be applied and modified to a variety of events.

The book presents the thoughts and arguments of the best Western thinkers of the past 2,500 years. The author first sets each thinker in their historical context, then goes into their major thoughts and conclusions. This is a superb book, engaging and beautifully written. A delight.

The book opens with the words “Life is difficult.” Once you accept that, it becomes a lot easier!Peck’s insights into spirituality (not to be confused with religion) had a far more profound, immediate and direct effect on my adult spirituality than did my strict religious upbringing and my entire education at private religious schools (without disparaging the lessons of my childhood rearing).